Twist of Fate
by Eariwen
Summary: Sad oneshot from Jaina's point of view. Jagged Fel meets with a tragedy while travelling to Chiss space to visit his family, and Jaina finds herself completely alone.


_DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of these characters, only the twisted plot that this oneshot follows. Please don't sue me!_

_Oh, and as fair warning, this has not been beta-d, but I have gone over it several times on my own. Nonetheless, read at your own risk._

Jaina sat on the edge of Jag's bed, pouting. "Are you sure you have to go?" she asked for what must have been the fifth time since she'd arrived at his officer's suite to say farewell.

For the fifth time Jag looked up from his packing his travel bag and moved to stand before her. He took Jaina's hands in his and gazed longingly into her eyes. "Yes. I have to. I haven't seen my family since Icame to help the New Republic out with the Yuuzhan Vong, and the conflict hasbeen over for two months. Before our wedding I have to go home and see them." He noted thather jawwas still set in a stubborn fashionand added,"they have a right to me, too, you know."

Jaina nodded, fighting off the sudden rush of tears she felt was about to well up and trying to remain strong.An odd sense of foreboding gnawed at her and she wanted nothingbut to hold him and never let him leave.Seeing her distress, he knelt so he was at eye level with her and said, "I'll be gone no more than a week. You get a whole week of freedom before I come back withyour new in-lawsin tow. But I have to leave now. We'll be marriedin two weeks' time as we agreed,I promise you. One week. Can you do that for me?"

Jaina bit her lower lip uneasily to quell its quivering but nodded, if only to appease him. He smiled, something that was still a rarity, even in Jaina's company, and kissed her lips gently. Jaina then allowed her fiancé to stand and finish his packing. Jaina noted that it took Jag considerably less time and baggage to pack for one week than her. She sighed. Despite her best efforts her mother's feminine ways were becoming imprinted on Leia's only daughter.

While Jaina was dwelling on this loss of anti-feminism Jag was rummaging about in one of the drawers in his dresser. A moment after Jaina noticed what he was doing he withdrew a small, metal band and moved to kneel before her as he had earlier. He slipped the ring onto Jaina's hand to that it sat atop her engagement ring on her finger. When she examined the band closer she saw that it was adorned with miniscule banthas imprintedall around it.

Jaina looked up at her fiancé questioningly. "Banthas?"

"They represent loyalty," he explained. "The banthas is the most loyal animalin the knowngalaxy. This is for you to wear while I'm away, just as a reminder that I love you and that I will always be faithful to you."

Jaina smiled softly, rather liking his explanation. She drew her hand to her mouth and kissed the ring, then Jag took her hand in his and did likewise. Then she leaned forward and kissed him gently on the lips. That kiss grew into a much more intense clash of mouth on mouth and she allowed herself to be lost in his beautiful green eyes for what she somehow knew would be the last time.

Half of an hour later they said their final goodbyes in the hangar bay where Jag's clawcraft stood ready and waiting. He held her waist tightly to him and she allowed herself to mold into his masculine frame, arms still flung around his neck. They shared one last slow, soft kiss before she brought her left hand before his face.

"This does not come off until you come home and take it off." She spoke as though it were an order, though who she was commanding, him or herself, she did not know. Nonetheless, Jag nodded, kissed her brow, and was suddenly gone up the ladder into the cockpit.

As she watched his fighter rise into the atmosphere of Mon Calamari, still the capital planet of the young Galactic Alliance, she said a silent prayer.

_Force, keep him safe and bring him back to me._

Jaina tossed and turned that night and when she finally fell asleep she had the most awful dream that her young years had ever been plagued with.

_She was lying belly down in a grassy yard which she realized with a start was a graveyard. She felt as though she had been lying there for hours and when she reached up to tough her face she felt fresh, salty tears laying their tracks down on her skin. Jaina could feel the sorrow and the loss that had caused the tears, but she could not pinpoint their origin._

_Then she noticed the headstone._

_Jaina lay beside a fresh, flower-covered grave whose inscription left her weak at the knees and light headed._

_**JAGGED FEL**_

_**Beloved son, brother, nephew, and lover**_

_Jaina let out a savage, heart-wrenching roar and threw her hands over her face. She notice, as she did that there was something gripped tightly in her left hand. It was a small, personal audio player. She groped for the ear buds that were connected to the device by a cord and pressed one to her right ear. What she heard broke her heart._

_She and Jag's song was what she heard issuing from the ear bud. Her first impulse was to throw it viciously away from herself, but she fought it off, electing instead to keep the one bud to her ear. The other she pressed to the freshly turned ground under which the body of her lover lay._

Jaina woke in a cold sweat, tears rolling down her face, rocking herself in her bed. She cried out Jag's name, but no answer came. She then reached out and touched the Force, trying to get a glimpse of his strong Force-presence, just to reassure herself that he was still alright.

He wasn't there. Jag wasn't there.

Her heart fell through her stomach to settle somewhere between her feet. If his presence wasn't in the Force then….No!

Jaina was about to jump out of bed to activate a comm channel when the unit chimed of its own accord. She immediately crossed the distance and answered the call. It was a member of an emergency vacuum paramedic team. From the look on his face she could tell that he didn't have good news for her.

"Lieutenant Solo—" he began, but Jaina cut him off.

"Where is he?"

The medic shifted uneasily under Jaina's piercing glare. "He's…he's gone, lieutenant. I'm sorry. There was a leak in his life support system. He died of suffocation in vacuum."

Jaina just stared at him. She and Jag had survived the Vong war together, an ordeal which they knew that they seemed too lucky to have lived through. Now he was dead because there was a leak in his air supply in the cockpit of the ship that had been his faithful war-horse? What a sick twist of fate. It wasn't fair, and Jaina didn't care if it sounded childish; it wasn't.

Jaina kept her external composure and said, "Thank you, sir."

The medic knew that she wouldn't care to know exactly how events had laid themselves out, but it was his duty to inform her. "When Colonel Fel realized that he was leaking air he pulled out of hyperspace and immediately called for help. He told us he had two hours left and that he would leave his final will and testaments on the central computer in case of our failure." The medic sighed, then continued, "the last thing he said was over his comm unit. He knew we weren't going to make it. He said, 'tell Jaina that I love her, and I apologize for leaving her alone.' He wanted to be buried on Naboo, for reasons his final will and testament said you would understand." Jaina's heart stopped. Naboo. That was where their wedding was supposed to have been. She was shaken back to reality when the medic continued. "We will ship his body back to Mon Cal for preparations tomorrow. It will then be shipped to Naboo for the ceremony and burial. We have already informed his family and we intend to call yours when this transmission has ended."

Jaina bit her trembling lower lip and nodded curtly, terminating the transmission.

How would she survive?

Hours later Jaina finally rocked herself into a tear-induced sleep when all the tears were shed and all of the reservoirs of her emotions had been drained.

The funeral was over, most attendees had returned to their homes and lives, and her own family seemed to have forgotten Jaina's anguish on the day she set out to visit Jag's grave for the last time. When she arrived and laid her fresh flowers atop the grave, the sight overwhelmed her and she fell to her knees before the resting place of the man who would, given two short weeks more, have been her husband.

The waves of tears and sorrow beat over her weary body until, at last, she found she was empty and realized that she had fallen facedown in the soft grass beside his grave. When she looked up Jaina saw the very scene of her terrible, prophetic dream two weeks previous, and the feeling of déjà vu nearly pushed her over the edge again.

She reached into her pocket for what she knew would be there. Yes, there it was: the personal audio player, though she could not recall why she had placed it there to begin with. She lifted the output to her ear with a trembling hand, knowing what she would hear, praying that it would not be.

There it was. She and Jag's song. Force, how it hurt her to hear it.

With a start she realized that today would have been their wedding, and had things turned out as they should have, she and Jag would be dancing to this song right now: their first dance as husband and wife.

With her other hand, much steadier than the first, she pressed the other ear bud to the mound of fresh soil turned down for her lover's eternal bed.

Jaina Solo cried herself to sleep beside the grave of her beloved on her wedding night.

_A/N: I know that this story is really sad, but I wrote it during the summer of 2004 after having a really scary dream and this was the only way to get the anxiety out of my system. It is also posted over at message boards, but it kept getting shoved down to the bottom of the page, so I thought I'd put it up here and see if I can get any more pointers._

_PLEASE R any constructive criticism is more than welcome!_


End file.
